1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print management apparatus which manages the arrangement of print images to be printed on a print medium, a print management system, a medium for storing a print management program, and a print management method.
2. Description of the Background Art
In binding magazines and the like, conventionally, the following technique has been used. A so-called imposition is carried out, that is to say, the respective pages of a magazine are allocated to the front and rear surfaces of a large sheet of paper having an area for a number of pages so that the print data representing print images of these pages is prepared by specifying the arrangement on this large sheet of paper. The respective press plates of C (cyan), M (magenta), Y (yellow) and K (black) are fabricated on the basis of the print data, these press plates are attached to a printing and binding machine so that printing is carried out, and the printed sheets of paper are folded in an aspect according to the imposition, and then the ends are cut so that the magazines are complete, and thus various proposals have been made to simplify this imposition (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2007-272782).
Recently, several types among various imposition patterns have been standardized, and printing and binding systems following this standard make automatic binding possible only by selecting a desired pattern from among the standardized imposition patterns and reading in print images into the system.
In addition, some of these printing and binding systems have a search function for narrowing down and searching imposition patterns registered in the system for an imposition pattern that satisfies predetermined conditions by inputting the conditions, for example, the number of pages to be allocated on one sheet of print paper.
In these printing and binding systems, however, it is necessary to register imposition patterns outside the standards in the system after describing the pattern from the beginning using a page describing language, such as XML or Postscript, in accordance with the JDF (Job Definition Format) prescribed under CIP 4 (International Standardizing Group for Printing) or a format unique to the printing and binding system, or after preparing the pattern outside the system by reediting the descriptions on the pages in the imposition pattern outside the current standards, and a problem arises in that this operation is troublesome.
In addition, in the case where the total number of pages in a magazine is 32 and the standards are narrowed down when the number of pages to be allocated on one side of one sheet of print paper is inputted as 16 in such a printing and binding system, for example, the results of narrowing down the patterns include an allocation pattern where the number of pages on one side is 8 and the pages are allocated in two sheets, and an allocation pattern where the number of pages on one side is 4 and the pages are allocated in four sheets, and a problem arises in that this operation is troublesome.